ORIGIN OF "CAPITULATIONS." ]5i there has never been a serious attempt to weld the various races under the rule of the sultan into one people. Ihit if it be ini])ossible for the Moslem to grant equal rights to Chris- tian and Moslem subjects, it is none the less impossible to extend similar rights to Christian foreigners. On the other hand, foreigners could not consent to live in a country where by law the Christian can hardly be said to have legal rights against a Mahometan. Hence the preservation of the system of capitulations became a necessity, if Christian foreigners were to be induced to remain or to settle in the empire. The Turks were compelled to recognize this, and, as they found capitulations in full vigor — Galata being, as we have seen, a fortified city in the hands of foreigners at the time of the capture of the city in 1453 — they continued the system. The history of the last four and a half centuries in Constantinople has been the history of the development of the system of ca- pitulations. Such a juridical anomaly is only now possible or tolerable in a country where foreigners have, and are entitled to have, no confidence in the administration of the government as the protector of life and property. Other nations have outgrown this system. The Turks have not done so; but, though other European nations have progressed beyond the legal concep- tion of a former time, there are many traces of the old system in their laws. The exterritoriality of ambassadors and the privileges of their retainers is a survival of this system. In Turkey also all the rights of jurisdiction enjoyed by foreigners are grouped round and closely connected with the rights con- ferred on ambassadors. But it is to be noted that in Constan- tinople the existing system is the direct lineal representative in unbroken succession of a wider exterritoriality which ex- isted during the middle ages and had been continued from Eoman times. Englishmen residing in France or other Euro- pean states are properly left to seek redress in the courts of the country where they are dwelling. It is worth remember- ing, however, that Englishmen have had to fall back upon the early type of a colony in a strange country in several instances. The factories of India, of Lisbon, and of St. Petersburg during
